White. — A Philological Study. 135 



Art. IX. — A Philological Study in Natural History. 

 By Taylor White. 



[Read before the Hawke's Bay Philosophical Institute, 21st October, 



1901.] 



Pkimitive man was a hunter of the beasts and birds. In 

 Europe the climatic conditions were arctic ; snow and ice 

 extended from the far north even to the centre of France 

 and Germany. Notwithstanding the rigours of the climate, 

 various animals suitable to these conditions of life inhabited 

 the outer margin of this great snow-cap. Man (as we see in 

 the Esquimaux of the present time) was there also as a 

 hunter of wild beasts, and as time went on he became herds- 

 man and utilised the reindeer, as Lapps do even now. From 

 certain osteological evidence as examined by scientists we 

 know this to have been the case. To myself it seems also 

 proved by philological deductions in the German language. 



When the Boman general, Julius Caesar, led his conquer- 

 ing armies through Gaul — a name which he gives to France 

 and part of Germany — he noticed several strange animals in 

 that country of which he had no previous knowledge, and 

 which he mentions in his history of his battles and con- 

 quests. One animal he names reno, or rehno, which I con- 

 sider to mean the reindeer, from comparing it with French 

 reune and German renn-thier (a reindeer), also with German 

 renn-pferd, a race-horse, renn-hirsch, a reindeer (literally, run- 

 ning- or race-stag, from renncn, to run) ; and renn-schlitten, 

 a sledge, also abbreviated to schlitten, a sledge, is a suit- 

 able name for the vehicle to which the animal renn-thier 

 was harnessed and utilised as a draught animal by his 

 owner. The suffix or additional word thier in renn-thier is 

 equivalent to beast or animal, which makes the whole word 

 mean " run-beast " or " race-beast," and I see no cause for 

 the special term runner, or racer, otherwise than as referring 

 to the speed of the animal when driven in a sledge. The 

 word thier, an animal, is the Teutonic form of our English 

 word deer, which we use now as a general term for the 

 Cervidcs, or stags, as in fallow deer or red deer. The word 

 fallow is from Anglo-Saxon fealu, fealo, a pale-red colour ; 

 therefore we get the " pale-red beast " and the "darker-red 

 beast " as the plain meaning of the two names. As to 

 whether the German rind, cattle, rinder-pest (rin-thier-peat), 

 cattle disease, is connected with rennen, to run, I find no evi- 

 dence, it being a word coined at a later date. 



When the climate of Europe became more ameliorated or 



